One of the first challenges with cultural maturity is understanding that you must first take care of yourself. Understand who you are. Why? Often we focus our attention on relating to others by merely tolerating them. Most people tolerate others so they can quickly move on. We don’t know the other person very well but we want to “appear respectful” when the workplace or community requires tolerance.

However, tolerance—by definition—means putting up with others’ unique characteristics, imperfections, and differences. Tolerance has been frowned upon because the perception is that you do not really care about that person. But, to truly express tolerance requires putting aside the focus on ourselves to see uniqueness. In order to accomplish this you must first understand yourself.

How do you begin? Think about this. It is almost impossible to understand, respect, embrace, care for, or validate another person if you have not invested the time in developing yourself or your people.

Personal development is important to building relationships. Technology may be the first choice of communication but, in order to develop long lasting culturally mature relationships, there is nothing like developing an understanding of someone the old fashion way: in person and face-to-face. This may be time-consuming, but building that relationship and uncovering your spirit is the first step in taking care of yourself and truly embracing others.

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